Ellis Giles

The PreK picnic was today with Alden.  We had a great time!  The field was too wet to fly kites, but they had a backup plan for activities in the gym.

We ate lunch first.  I brought green beans and chicken nuggets.  Alden sat very patiently with me and ate on a picnic table cloth on the floor.

We then headed downstairs and played games in the gym.  We played limbo, cart rolling, and walking with stuff on our heads.  Alden did very good at all three games!

It was then time for all the children to go backup upstairs and Dads to go home.  Grand D. picked up Alden later that day.

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After finishing cleaning the garage, I got ready to go to grandma’s house.  Alden and Meredith were getting ready with mommy, and she had fixed things for them to eat.  MH had been making cakes for Evan and Allison all day - Evan a key-lime pie and Allison a cheesecake.  MH, Alden, and Meredith had gone to the store to get ingredients too.

We made it to grandma’s house about 45 minutes before game time.  She had made a bunch of nice, yummy sandwiches, and there was plenty of food.  Evan brought some hot wings, and my mom brought some home-made pretzels.  We forgot to bring the onions to my mom that Alden and I had picked yesterday.

Alden was very wired.  We had to go outside a couple of times to run off energy.  Meredith went the first time with us too.  They both enjoyed running down grandma’s little hill in the back.  I was timing Alden and he really liked trying to beat his previous time.  When we went back inside, Meredith kept taking sips of my coca-cola.  It was very cute.

Alden and Meredith didn’t pay much attention to the game, except when there was a big touchdown!  They really enjoyed the halftime show with Madonna and sat very still the entire time.  When the game started back up, there were again getting into things at great-gramdma’s house, and we could tell she was uneasy.  After the Patriots scored again, and were winning with a nice lead, we headed back to our house, bathed the kids, and put them in the car and drove home.  Little did we know the Patriots wouldn’t score again and end up losing!  The kids fell asleep on the way home, and so ended another week.

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We had a nice weekend in Bluebonnet Hills.  It rained quite a bit, which we still need!

It was very relaxing.  I drove in from Houston after work, and made it before the kids went to sleep.  MH had taken the kids to my Mom’s house so MH could work and my mom watch the kids.  Since my mom had foot surgery less than two weeks ago she can’t drive.  I got to read the Alden and Meredith two books before putting them to sleep.

Saturday and Sunday we spent playing in the house and going outside.  It rained so much on Saturday morning that Alden and I saw a waterfall in the back stream which had been dry all last summer.  All the ponds have filled back up too.  The Christmas tree had blown all the way off the pile almost into the woods.  Alden and I picked wild onions all in the back.  We agreed that we would be rich if we could pick all the onions and sell them.  They are everywhere in the woods.  When we made it inside, Alden said Mommy we are rich!  We washed all the onions off and ate some.  They were the small, wild kind.

After Meredith woke up, we went to look for the waterfall, but it had reduced in size, but she was still impressed.  We then made some burgers, sweet potato fries, and onion rings.  Meredith is getting so big!  She loves to play in the big room!

I cleaned out the entire garage.  It took a long time, but it looks great now.  Alden played a lot outside while I was doing the cleaning including bashing rocks, etc.

Before we knew it, it was Sunday evening and we had the Superbowl party at great-grandma’s house.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: Alden, Brenham, Meredith, MH | 36 Comments »

My mom had surgery on Monday and we went up to visit on Saturday since she missed her Friday.  Grand D. was very nice in watching Alden and Meredith an extra day!

We only stopped by the Brenham place to check on things, grab the rockets, etc.  The kids were taking a nap, so it gave us a few minutes to get stuff together.  MH brought dinner over since it has been difficult for my mom to move around.  After we thought some problems with the launch control, but really just a bad connection to the ignitor, we were a go for launch.  We launched the small mosquito rocket, knowing we’d never see it again! Bye mosquito!  It was pretty heavy winds and probably shouldn’t be launching rockets, but it was fun.  We then launched the Alpha again with a paratrooper inside.  Angled into the wind, it went almost straight up.  Luckily the shoot on the rocket and the one on the paratrooper didn’t open, so they came almost straight down.  The Alpha even landed on the back patio!  The paratrooper looked like it blew a long ways away, but it actually came down rather close.  I was going to give up looking and my mom said, oh look right there, and I did even though I though it had landed much farther away.  And, it was right there.  The shoot hadn’t opened up either.

We bathed the kids after dinner and put them into their PJ’s and headed back into Houston.

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Alden and I went to see the Harlem Globetrotters and had a great time. We watched the entire game. Alden loved the game and was so happy that “we won!”

He rode on my shoulders when we were looking for our row and loved walking around like that.  When he saw the inside of the arena, he said, “wow!”  We had gone to see the Houston Aeros play but it was over a year ago.   We couldn’t have any of the food, but he was excited that I had brought him in some power bars from whole foods when he got hungry.

The game and show lasted over two hours and he was entertained the entire time.  A couple of times he wanted to go but quickly changed his mind.  He like the trick shots and how the Trotters could catch the ball on their back or spin it on their finger.  He was so happy to come home and tell mommy and Meredith that the Globetrotters, we, won!  We had a great time!

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Alden was doing magic this morning and would take a letter and hide it under his kitchen stool. It was time to get dressed. I had a good idea for him as a magician to transform from PJs to being dressed. He was to take brown blanket, say the magic words, disappear by hiding behind brown blanket draped over his kitchen stool, get dressed, then reappear saying ta da! He did very well, got stuck on some of his buttons on his shirt, but other than that got totally dressed. Proof that he can get dressed all by himself when he wants to!

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I told you to tell ‘em that you was in a sanitarium, not vote for Rick Santorum

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I’m going to create a small application to help track a balloon launch and subsequently predict the landing point shortly after burst.

Links to rocket equations:

http://my.execpc.com/~culp/rockets/rckt_eqn.html

Density of Air Calculations:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Density_of_air

Terminal Velocity and Drag:

http://microgravity.grc.nasa.gov/education/rocket/termvr.html

http://microgravity.grc.nasa.gov/education/rocket/flteqs.html

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I had a cloud computing event during the day and headed to Star Pizza with a coworker afterwards and ate too much.  I visited some colleagues from my last job, their business is really taking off.

I got home early.  Grand D. said that Alden had decided to write and then wrote the word ‘Boo’ all by himself while Grand D. had stepped away.  Very cool!  Alden’s first word all by himself.

I then asked if they wanted to go to the kids club and they both said yes.  So, I borrowed Grand D.’s van and we headed over to the 24hr fitness in the village.  Alden said he wanted to go to that one since it has the basketball net and he likes it better.  Meredith started crying really hard when I dropped them off.  She was also very insistent that she didn’t want to take her sparkle shoes off - good since she didn’t have socks on.  Both Alden and Meredith put their own shoes on really quickly since they were excited at going to kids club.  Funny how that works when they want to do something Alden can put them on himself, but not when it’s time to go to school.  I think it’s one of Meredith’s first times to put her shoes on by herself on the correct feet!  I came back after only a half hour, worrying about Meredith, but she said she had a great time and wanted to come back.  We then headed home and the kiddos had pizza for dinner.

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Alden and Meredith had been to Sunday school and brunch that morning.  Santa Claus was at brunch and they got to have fun and make crafts.  When they got home, I made them brunch and they ate a ton of scrambled eggs and bacon.  Then it was Meredith’s nap time.

Late Sunday afternoon, after Meredith woke up from her nap I asked the kiddos what they wanted to do.  Alden wanted to go to kids club and Meredith the science museum.  But both were closing relatively soon, so we decided on the zoo.  It was almost 4 and the zoo closed at 6 so we had to hurry.  It had been raining and cold most of the day, so we suited up and hurried off to the zoo.

With very few cars in the parking lot, the zoo appeared to be closed.  But, we got the stroller out and rolled on into the zoo.  We hurried to make it to the Dora or the Polar express 4-D movies, but as we approached, one of the workers said it was already closed, and gave us two free tokens for the carousel .   We followed him over to it, and Alden wanted to ride the tree frog.  We finally found it and Meredith rode the Antelope next to it.  The smile on her face was the biggest I’ve ever seen as she went up and down!  We had the entire ride to ourselves!

Next we went to check out the monkeys, Meredith’s favorite.  We saw a few small ones, but most of them must have been settled in since it was getting cold.  We took a walk through the bird hall and Alden pointed out that it would take us backwards because we would come out back the way we came.  It was nice to warm up in the tropical bird house!  We only saw two other groups of people.  We kept commenting we almost have the entire zoo to ourselves.

We then went over to the natural wonders building.  Alden pointed out where zoo camp starts and we also looked for the merekats, but they must have been in the ground where it was warm.  We spent a long time in the natural wonders building.  We got to see the otter, take a picture through the cave, go through the tunnel several times, and more.  Meredith bumped her head in the tunnel so didn’t want to go back in the tunnel even when we both going to go through.  We saw a tortoise walking, a very big one sleeping, and an armadillo running around along with some prairie fowl.  We saw some fish that were on top of the water and a giant eel.

Next we went to the aquarium and got to see the sea horses, jellyfish, and some colorful fish.  We couldn’t find the octopus, but saw the moray eel, which scared the kiddos so they ran off and.  We then looked at some giant fish that were bigger than Alden.

It was then time to go so Meredith rode on Alden’s lap in the stroller.  They had so much fun rolling to the car it was easy to leave.  By then it was pushing 5:55 and dark and starting to drizzle.  We loaded up, headed home just in time for a great dinner with chicken and broccoli!

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